Consumers, Estate Agents and Redress Bill [HL]

I support the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, in her Amendment No. 101. Those who support, as many do, the proposal that consumer bodies should be brought together as desirable within the new council have to recognise that the case for water, for reasons that the noble Baroness has just set out, may well be different, certainly with regard to timing. Amendment No. 101 deals with timing, and it is that which I shall specifically refer to. The question is, after all, whether the consumer will be best represented in the very special case of water, compared with personal services, energy and the like. Will he be better served by allowing the Consumer Council for Water to be subsumed within the new council in 2008, as the Bill would allow, or should there be provision, as in Amendment No. 101, that the process cannot start until 2011? The case is very strong because of the special circumstances of water. I am not suggesting that ultimately there will not be a case for bringing the water sector within the council’s remit. The probing amendments give the Minister an opportunity to make that case, but the case for delaying any deliberation on this issue until 2011 is very convincing. Let us remind ourselves that the consumers are not greatly enamoured with the water sector. You have only to remember the press this summer about drought orders, the water companies’ return on capital, which some saw as excessive, and the implications of environmental impacts, not least with the water framework directive. These and other issues created a lot of public interest. There has been consistent extreme criticism, not just of the role of Ofwat in trying to monitor the price limits for the water companies but also of the Environment Agency. It needed the Consumer Council for Water, which came into existence only in October 2005, with its new statutory powers, to bring consumers into a position where they could influence much more directly the regulatory roles of Ofwat and the Environment Agency. Many of us—including the Select Committee on Science and Technology, which I was privileged to chair, and which produced a report in June 2006—came to the conclusion that, in the admittedly short time that the Consumer Council for Water had then been in existence, it had started to bring the consumer more centrally into deliberations on how our water should better be managed for long-term continuity of supply and to get much better consumer ownership of the clear problems about how demand can be curtailed. For example, why do we use 160 litres of water per capita when other countries in Europe, our neighbours, with standards of living which are not dramatically different, appear to manage with a lower consumption per capita? Those are issues which we will never resolve unless consumers can buy into the issues. When they see leakages in the streets and hear that some water companies have a leakage rate of 30 per cent or more, it is not surprising that they do not buy into it. Perhaps it has to be admitted from these Benches that the privatisation process did, indeed, cause further lack of ownership. The Consumer Council for Water has clearly got off to a good start. It is trying to ensure that the consumer is properly represented, not just in the day-to-day issues about vulnerable communities or water supply and drought orders, but in looking at the medium-term issues of the water framework directive and the issues about the next round of price levels for water. It would be a great mistake to take an organisation which, after all, has only been in existence for 15 months or so and to suggest in the Bill that it has to be subsumed into the new council as early as 2008 or thereabouts. If the Minister can find it in himself to give the assurance that Amendment No. 101 stands and that there is a time limit before which nothing will happen, it will give an enormous assurance to the consumers, some of whom might well see the advantage ultimately of water being treated in the same way as other consumer bodies. However, it would be a great mistake at this stage not to listen very carefully to the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, and to give favourable consideration to Amendment No. 101.